A review of pieces, places, and people following antiques from origin to market to home.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Rough Luxe and the New Antiquarians

Rough Luxe is the soon to be cliché term replacing shabby chic, vintage, bohemian, loft like, etc; but whatever we call it, this movement has been around for several decades. The Wall Street Journal published a story last week stating that the world of interiors has a new manifesto. Rough Luxe is antiminimalism and antiperfection. It is “a study in contradictions, an attempt to reconcile the antique or the just plain old with the contemporary, the accumulated with the newly acquired, the decrepit with the pristine.” The unfinished, unplanned and somewhat chaotic is now artful dissonance.

As with design trends of the past, design always lags behind literature trends by 10 to 20 years. The 1980s minimalism of literature gave way to a new cultural hybridity, where the individual’s physical self and cultural self can be two different halves of the same whole. The battle of theatrical and perfect versus the authentic and imperfect is leading to “a rejection of the minimalism that dominated the world we grew up in—a style that began as industrial and makeshift and gradually progressed to extravagant and precious.” This cultural hybridity is no longer restricted in time, place, style or the emotional range of the space.

Examples of the movement show a curiosity, almost ravenous appetite, for found objects and existing conditions, the use of unexpected materials in unpredictable ways, and the poetically juxtaposed. Decorating by the book is considered dry and unimaginative. These design rebels, referred to by the New York Times as the New Antiquarians, are spreading their rough luxe mantra of authenticity. The Future Laboratory is predicting authenticity as the next big thing and in their April 2009 trend report, called “Inspire: Rough Luxe,” stated, it “celebrates a heavy rawness erring on the artisanal. Because of the downturn, consumers are taking a bit longer to think about a purchase and they want to buy into a story.”

Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, says of the New Antiquarians, “It’s way more than anti-modernism, this sort of deep spelunking into the past. It’s not aspirational and it’s not nostalgic. It’s a fantasy world that is almost entirely a visual collage. It’s a stitched-together, bricolage world, an alternative world. Authenticity is such a fed-up idea. But collecting these old things, it’s like there is an aura attached to them. It’s not some prepackaged product being foisted on you by a big corporation. Too bad it’s going to be commodified. Everything in the fashion world gets hoovered up.”

Cy Twombly’s apartment, Vogue, 1966

Cy Twombly’s apartment, 1968

. . .

Axel Vervoordt’s philosophy is, “Make people happy; make them discover things in themselves; make them feel at home and love their house.” With a love of everything that is real, the Belgian designer will recreate anything he cannot find and make it real. He says his spaces have a “timeless, universal feel and are not fashionable.”

. . .

The well known architectural and interior photographer François Halard’s frequent commissions for Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ and House & Garden have caught the eye of Armani, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Yves Saint-Laurent, Hugo Boss and Ann Taylor. The photographer is fascinated by these artists and their creative dwellings, which has led to several collaborations. He describes the spaces as “autobiographical and a reflection of the soul.”

. . .

Rei Kawakubo, Japanese fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garçons, has been designing anti-fashion, austere, and deconstructed garments since the 1970s. She integrates graphic design, advertising and shop interiors as a part of one vision, deliberately synchronized.

. . .

Collectors like Hollister and Porter Hovey, sisters with an appetite for late 19th-century relics like apothecary cabinets and dressmakers' dummies, are turning their homes into pastiches of the past.

The New York Times article, The New Antiquarians, presented these modern rebels as searching for a “new vintage life,” as the smooth surfaces of modern design having lost its allure.

Sean Crowley, a neckware designer at Ralph Lauren, and Meredith Modzelewski’s apartment features Edwardian-style portraits, heraldic devices and mounted antlers. The connection between the objects and the impulse to acquire them is not nostalgia, they say. It is “the draw of authenticity, whether it's an aesthetic, a recipe or a technique.”

Ryan Matthew collects Victorian oddities like domestic taxidermy and osteological antiques. His shop, Against Nature, just opened last week in Manhattan.

9 comments:

This trend business is beyond me, but fun. Is it leadership, competition, or herd? Who cares: designers, critics, or clients? All of the above I guess. At the highest end - the trend-making designers/clients - the competition must be extreme. I prefer the idea of the provincial talent who doesn't read the critics.

Such an awesome post! The whole notion of "rough luxe" is definitely very in tune with my whole vibe. I really enjoyed reading through it all. Thanks so much for the comment over at Urban Flea, I'll make sure to add you to my blogroll!

I found your blog through Joni's - it's wonderful! I'm so glad to find out that there's a "name" for the style that I like. While I do like some modern things, something that's old (or looks it, in some cases!) always appeals to me - it just has a certain allure.

Hi Spencer. I really love this post. Have loved Architectural Salvage for years. There's also a sense of serendipity in this style of decorating...one of a kind, inimitable. Well...sometimes imitable...a few years ago we were thrilled to find a single long oar in the dirt crawl space under our house. We stood it up proudly in the corner of the living room. Now there are oars every where. But at least the real bits of history, for now, are being cherished. Trish

The Architectural Antique Review

About me

With over 10 years experience in the design and construction industry, Spencer Howard has completed $150 million in new construction and renovation projects ranging from residential to institutional facilities.